“Conflict is a part of human experience,” says Wichita West High School psychologist Janet Fox Peterson, “and teaching about speaking and listening is so very critical, and we’re not working on that very much as a society.”

“They are human beings, and so they have a right to live in peace and security,” says Imam Omar Suleiman, who has made several visits to the refugee camps on the Jordanian-Syrian border. “And if we’re not contributing to the betterment of their situation...are we really the moral standard ...

Bob Feinman of Humane Borders says he “didn’t spend a whole lot of time paying attention to the rabbis” when he was in religious school as a child. “But the one thing I remember was the Seder every year at Passover, the Exodus. We were the ones that walked around in circles following Moses ...

“We have a government now that is trying to legislate what it means to be faithful—faithful to America, faithful to a particular religious perspective,” says Rabbi Jack Moline, president of the Interfaith Alliance. “We heard that in the pre-inaugural sermon that the president was presented ...

“We’re going back to where it all began,” says Fr. Columba Stewart, a scholar of monasticism and a Benedictine monk at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, “with a variety of models of Christian ascetic life, and by ascetic I just mean disciplined. That’s what people are ...

His movie "Silence," says director Martin Scorsese, “is the struggle for the very essence of faith, stripping away everything else around it. You have to find a relationship with Jesus,” says Scorsese, “with yourself, really, because that’s the one you face.”

“I have heard that the Trump presidency could see the reemergence of a real Christian left in the United States,” says Stephen Schneck, director of the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America.

“I said this to myself in the face of my captors: You have the power to break my body, and you’ve tried. You have the power to bend my mind, and you’ve tried. But my soul is not yours to possess. In other words, my soul lay in the hand of God.”

“There is a really important role that spirituality is playing among millennials and contemporary activists,” says Sarah Jackson, a professor at Northeastern University in Boston and an expert on social movements. But “it is a spirituality that is not necessarily tied to the formal structures ...

“What defines you the most is what you do despite your fear,” says Katie Meyler, a 34-year-old American from suburban New Jersey who was working in Liberia in the midst of extreme poverty when Ebola struck. Now she runs a growing network of schools for girls and says, “Nobody chooses Liberia. ...

“I have never held myself out as a Muslim leader,” says Sadiq Khan, who became mayor of London shortly before Britain voted to leave the European Union. “But it’s a fact I’m a leader of Islamic faith, so that brings with [it] a responsibility, especially in current times.”

“The buffalo was always part of our daily life,” says Harry Barnes, chairman of the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council. “It was in front of us, it was behind us, it was around us. It created our shelter, our clothing, and that was an integral part of us. And then after we lost it, it was a ...

The majority of patients are Muslim, and the majority of doctors and nurses are Christian at this hospital near the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. “The aim is to help people—to help the poor, to help the sick, Muslim, Christian, or whatever… We don’t refuse anybody,” says Dr. Salim ...

“Refugees are not the ones harming this country,” says Aden Batar, director of immigration and refugee resettlement for Catholic Community Services of Utah. “Ever since the refugee resettlement program started back in the ’70s, we have more than 3 million successfully resettled in the US, ...

"Carols and hymns are amazingly succinct theological statements,” says Eileen Guenther, professor of church history at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. “There is more theology in a few words of poetry than you can possibly imagine. You can have a whole sermon in four lines.”

“We’ve got to protect our congregation and ourselves,” says David Lee, a Presbyterian church deacon. But “how do you really do that if someone enters our facility with intent to do harm? It’s not clear how do we go about doing things.”

“These are shaky times,” says Christian gospel, R&B, rap, pop, and hip-hop artist Kirk Franklin. “I’m praying and hoping maybe one thing that I’ve said, from somebody who came from nothing, could maybe still give just a little bit of hope that it can get better.”

“We do have a higher rate of violence—not crime, but a higher rate of violence—than other industrialized nations,” says Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project. "Some of that, our high murder rate, is related to the widespread availability of guns and illegal weapons."

“Everybody feels that sense of coming to the table together, dining together, sharing the meal together,” says Renee Boughman, executive chef in North Carolina’s High Country.

“Donald Trump captured 81 percent of the white evangelical vote. That was key, because if you take away the evangelical share of the vote, which is about a quarter, Hillary Clinton would have won by a landslide. Now, 81 percent is slightly more than Mitt Romney got, but keep in mind that this time ...